Die Deutschen und die Diktaturen | In Cooperation with L.I.S.A.

Frank Bösch's keynote lecture "Die Deutschen und die Diktaturen" presented at our "Human Rights Between Universalism and Particularism" conference at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History on June 6, 2024, is now available as a video podcast on the Gerda Henkel Foundation's Science Portal L.I.S.A.

Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch, born in 1969 in Lübeck, is professor for European 20th Century History at the University of Potsdam and director of the Leibniz-Center for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam (from 2011 – present). He received his PhD at the University of Göttingen and taught as professor at Ruhr University Bochum and Justus Liebig University Giessen. His main fields of research are German contemporary history in a global perspective, media history and the history of divided and united Germany. He is the author of seven monographs, including “Zeitenwende 1979. Als die Welt von heute began” (2019) and “Mass Media and Historical Change. Germany in International Perspective. 1400 to the present” (2015). His latest book “Deals mit Diktaturen. Eine andere Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (2024) (“Deals with Dictatorships. A different history of the Federal Republic of Germany”) analyses Germany’s changing relationships to autocratic states and puts a specific focus on their abuse of human rights.

Die Deutschen und die Diktaturen

In recent years, there has been increasing criticism about Germany's particularly close relations with many dictatorships. Accordingly, the current government is calling for a more value-driven foreign policy. The lecture shows how these close ties to autocracies have developed since the 1950s and how this cooperation has led to criticism of human rights violations in those countries. It points out how the protection of persecuted German people abroad was amended by universalistic approaches. It will also show the influence that NGOs, such as Amnesty International, protests, and exiles were able to exert on German foreign policy. At what point did the Federal Republic of Germany participate in sanctions due to human rights violations and what effects did these sanctions have? Clearly, the Federal Government tended to prioritize the protection of foreign trade, but did participate in sanctions in certain protest coalitions. The foreign policy commitment to human rights remained selective, yet increased in the early 1970s and the early 1990s.